In the lead-in to a video by Joel Kotkin & Co. about the means progressives used to destroy California, Spiked's editors write two sentences that could very nearly be my epitaph. Here they are.
California was once a byword for freedom, tolerance and economic dynamism. Today, it is the sick man of America, blighted by soaring poverty, racial strife and record emigration.
Last night I was talking with a friend who is also a California emigre and we agreed we grew up in the state described in the first sentence. And we both left because of the conditions described in the second sentence.
The state we grew up in was the envy of the world. It was dynamic, growing, leading socially, prosperous, beautiful, clean, and just newer looking than the Midwest, South and East.
Higher education was both plentiful and cheap. If it didn't match the Ivies in prestige, the quality was enough to launch the other DrC and I, both children of parents with little or no college, onto a path leading to university faculty careers.
Personally I loved CA. I had every intention of living there the rest of my life while enjoying the envy of my friends in other states. It was not to be.
The deterioration has taken time, as we watched in dismay. We stopped being CA voters in 2003 and sold our last piece of property there in 2020.
That beautiful place was nearly 12 acres featuring a custom hilltop home with a 40 mile view plus outbuildings. We owned it for over 30 years, a place we'd hoped was a "forever home." Wrong again, alas.
Well-intentioned human beings truly can spoil paradise, a sad fact for which the Golden State is the "ingot of proof."
